News

Palo Alto committee backs ordinance to oust homeless from Cubberley

By Jason Green

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted:
08/14/2013 12:18:51 AM PDT

Updated:
08/21/2013 04:39:20 PM PDT

A Palo Alto City Council committee gave its blessing Tuesday night to an ordinance that would end Cubberley Community Center's days as a de facto homeless shelter, but also agreed to commit as much as $250,000 to programs aimed at getting people off the streets.

The Policy and Services Committee voted 3-1 to recommend that the city council pass an ordinance that would make it illegal for a person to set foot on the campus between 10:30 p.m. and sunrise. The new law was prompted by concerns neighbors and users of the community center at 4000 Middlefield Road have expressed as the homeless population there has swelled.

"The homeless in my view have the same rights as other citizens and we do also need to express compassion for citizens ... who do not have the same abilities to have housing that most of us have," said Council Member Larry Klein. "But the homeless do not have more rights than the rest of us. None of us has the right to declare or make Cubberley or any other community center into a homeless shelter. And that's precisely what's happened here."

As many as 20 people are camping at the community center every night, up from five or 10 two years ago, according to a city staff report.

At the same time, a majority of the committee said the city should spend $150,000 to create a "homeless outreach team" that would target the most difficult to serve homeless individuals. They were also in favor of providing a total of $100,000 in subsidies to house 10 of the people.

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Dr. Brian Greenberg, vice president of programs and services for Inn Vision Shelter Network, said a Ahomeless outreach team would work with the police department to put a roof over the heads of the worst offenders.

"What we've found in other cities is that if you can get the most difficult 20, 30, 40 homeless people off the streets and into housing, that that creates a different quality of life for the entire community," Greenberg said. "There's no magic bullet to this thing. What we do is we guard against us serving the low-hanging fruit, the easy to serve homeless people."

Council Member Karen Holman, who cast the dissenting vote, said the ordinance did not go far enough.

"I do think that some of the recommendations made by the public solve some of the issues that the ordinance does not," said Holman, referring to one resident's list of suggestions, which included locking Dumpsters at night and discarding unattended belongings.

That resident, Penny Ellson, said fights and drugs have become commonplace at Cubberley.

"This is not appropriate activity for a community center that primarily serves children," Ellson said.

But Chuck Jagoda, who lives in his car, said it wasn't fair to attribute all of the problems to homeless individuals. He said many of his fellow vehicle dwellers often clean up after other visitors.

"It's prejudice. It's profiling. It's jumping to conclusions. Everybody assumes if there are syringes, they must be homeless people's syringes," Jagoda told the committee. "Not necessarily."

Other members of the public appealed to the panel to delay the ordinance until programs to help the homeless were in place.

"I realize as a person who's been there a lot, there's some issues to be dealt with at Cubberley," said Katie Fantin, director of operations and missions at Vineyard Christian Fellowship, which meets at the community center. "But I'm concerned that if we close Cubberley without a lot of these great ideas being put into place, it's just a little bit too short of a timeframe."

Nearly 29 people would be displaced by the proposed ordinance, said Capt. Rob Watson of the Palo Alto Police Department.

Klein said neighbors and users of the community center had waited long enough for some redress.

"I don't think we have the right to continue to impose this unwarranted obligation on the Greenmeadow neighborhood until we find a solution that is very difficult to find," he said.

The ordinance would build on another law the city council passed earlier this month that bans people from living in their cars.